Author: Robert Zimmerman

China launches hi-res Earth observation satellite

9:14 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to place a new version of a smallsat Earth observation satellite into orbit. Dubbed the Beijing-3B, it appears to be an upgrade of a design first launched last year.

The launch site was in the interior of China, and for certain dumped its first stage onto that interior.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 33 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 51.

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InSight power levels remain steady on Mars

4:54 pm

InSight's status through August 21, 2022

The InSight science team today released its weekly update on the lander’s ability to generate power from its dust-covered solar panels, I have charted the new numbers, through August 21, 2022, on the graph to the right. From the update:

InSight was generating an average of 400 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at .88 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

For the fourth straight week the daily power level remained steady, not dropping as predicted by engineers to a point in August that the mission would end. As it appears the seismometer can function when the panels produce 400 watt-hours per day, the lander is thus holding its own instead of shutting down.

That the amount of dust in the atmosphere increased slightly is both good and bad news. The good news: Even with slightly more dust, InSight’s power levels did not drop. The bad news: There is still plenty of dust in the air that can settle on the solar panels and further degrade their ability to generate electricity.

InSight’s future is thus a day-to-day thing, though it appears at this moment that it can likely continue to gather earthquake data for another week.

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Ingenuity completes 30th flight

3:57 pm

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity sometime during the August 20-21 weekend successfully completed its 30th flight, a short hop designed to check out its systems after a two-month pause during the dusty Martian winter.

The tweet mentions the flight was also an effort to clear off any dust that settled on the helicoper’s solar panels. In addition, the flight tested precision landings in anticipation of the present plans to use a helicopter on a future mission to recover Perseverance’s Martian samples.

The tweet provides no information about the flight, but this update from August 19, 2022 describes the flight plan:

When things get underway, the helicopter will climb to a max altitude of 16.5 feet (5 meters), translate sideways about 6.5 feet (2 meters), and then land. Total time aloft will be around 33 seconds.

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August 23, 2022 Quick space links

1:47 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay:

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Pushing back harder: Blacklisted oral surgeon Skoly amends lawsuit against Rhode Island to note CDC new guidelines

11:47 am

Oral surgeon Stephen Skoly, blackballed by Rhode Island
Oral surgeon Stephen Skoly, blackballed by Rhode Island

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because officials in the state of Rhode Island continue to blacklist oral surgeon Stephen Skoly because of his refusal to get any COVID shots for health reasons, his lawyers have now filed an amended lawsuit, noting that Rhode Island’s shot mandates are now recognized as “irrational” by the CDC itself and should cease immediately.

This is a follow-up of an earlier blacklist story. In August 2021 Skoly had been forced to shut down his dental practice — serving 800 patients monthly — because the state had imposed a mandate requiring him to get COVID shots, even though he had already gotten COVID and had natural immunity, had serious health issues that made getting the shots unwise, and was willing to protect his patients with a high level face shield.

In February 2022 Skoly sued, and then expanded his suit in May 2022 when the state refused to grant him unemployment insurance for the time period his practice had been shuttered.

Skoly’s lawyers, from the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), have now amended the lawsuit again, noting that the CDC now recognizes that natural immunity gives as good if not better immunity than the COVID shots. And yet, Rhode Island is still demanding healthcare workers get the jab. From amended complaint [pdf]:
» Read more

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Storm fronts on Jupiter

10:27 am

Storm front on Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was processed by citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos from a raw image taken by the Jupiter orbiter Juno on August 17, 2022.

The orbiter was 18,354 miles above the cloud tops when the image was snapped. It shows a stormy cloud band in the southern hemisphere.

You can get a sense of the processing that Thomospoulos did by comparing this image with the raw photo. The original has almost no contrast, either in color or in contrast. By enhancing both Thomospoulos makes the violent nature of these large storms, thousands of miles in size, quite visible.

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A global map of Mars’ future mining regions

9:38 am

A global map of Mars' future mining regions
Click for labeled image.

Using data accumulated in the past decade from orbiters, scientists have now published a global map of Mars, showing the regions on the red planet where there are high concentrations of hydrated minerals, minerals formed in the past in conjunction with the presence of water.

The maps to the right show those regions in various colors, indicating different types of minerals.

On Earth, clays form when water interacts with rocks, with different conditions giving rise to different types of clays. For example, clay minerals such as smectite and vermiculite form when relatively small amounts of water interact with the rock and so retain mostly the same chemical elements as the original volcanic rocks. In the case of smectite and vermiculite those elements are iron and magnesium. When the amount of water is relatively high, the rocks can be altered more. Soluble elements tend to be carried away leaving behind aluminium-rich clays such as kaolin.

The big surprise is the prevalence of these minerals. Ten years ago, planetary scientists knew of around 1000 outcrops on Mars. This made them interesting as geological oddities. However, the new map has reversed the situation, revealing hundreds of thousands of such areas in the oldest parts of the planet.

Though this data once again suggests that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, for future colonists it is more important in that it identifies the regions where the most valuable resources will likely be found. For example, most of the colored regions on the map are located in the dry equatorial parts of Mars. However, south of the giant canyon Valles Marineris is a mineral region at about 30 to 40 degrees south latitude, to the northwest of Argyre Basin. This is also a region with a high concentration of glacial features. The two combined will likely make this region very valuable real estate.

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SpaceX to use both Falcon 9 and Starship to launch 2nd gen Starlink satellites

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: In a letter sent to the FCC, SpaceX has revealed that it has revised its plans for launching the second generation of Starlink satellites, and has decided to launch them with both Falcon 9 and Starship rockets.

SpaceX has decided to use a mix of Falcon 9 and Starship rockets to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation. Launching some of the satellites with SpaceX’s “tested and dependable Falcon 9” will accelerate the constellation’s deployment to improve Starlink services. SpaceX director of satellite policy David Goldman wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to the Federal Communications Commission. Goldman did not say when SpaceX could start launching the second-generation constellation, which remains subject to FCC approval.

Previously the company’s plan had been to use Starship only, essentially retiring Falcon 9 once Starship was flying. This change could be for two fundamental reasons. First, the company has been launching Starlinks on Falcon 9 like clockwork this year, at a pace that could launch as many as 2,500 Starlink satellites in 2022 alone. With about 70% of that rocket reusable, it might now seem cost effective to continue to use it, even after Starship is flying.

The second reason is more worrisome, and has to do with Starship itself. SpaceX officials might now realize that the delays being imposed by the federal regulatory leviathan on Starship development might be significant enough that it won’t be ready when they need it for the full deployment of Starlink’s second generation constellation. If the FCC approves that deployment (an approval that is presently pending), SpaceX will have to launch at least half the full constellation of 30,000 satellites by around 2024 (thought that date might have been revised slightly).

It now might be necessary to use Falcon 9, because the federal government under Biden is standing in the way of Starship development.

Of course, it is possible that the engineering challenge of building Starship might be another reason. SpaceX might have realized that the rocket will be delayed anyway, and thus needs Falcon 9 to meet its timetable as promised to the FCC.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches satellite

8:47 am

China today successfully used its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket to launch what appears to be a technology test satellite for the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the launch was from an interior spaceport in China, the rocket’s first stages crashed somewhere inland.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

37 SpaceX
32 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 52 to 32 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 52 to 50.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Christian chaplain for Austin fire dept fired for believing in Christianity

12:08 pm

Chaplain Andrew Fox, blacklisted
Andrew Fox

The modern dark age: Andrew Fox, who had been the chaplain for the fire department in Austin, Texas, was fired by the department’s fire chief, Joel Baker, because Fox had expressed some opinions on his own independent blog that Baker did not like.

Dr. Fox is an ordained minister who started Austin’s fire chaplaincy program and served as the city’s lead chaplain—a volunteer position—for eight years. After sharing on his personal blog his religious and commonsense view that men and women are biologically different and men should not compete on women’s sports teams, city officials demanded that Dr. Fox recant and apologize for expressing that view, and then proceeded to fire him.

More details here. Fox has now filed a lawsuit [pdf], which notes the following about the website where Fox posted his comments:
» Read more

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